She started up with new pistons/rings.
I only heard her idle for a quick second - then I shut her off. I've got some loctite gasket stuff on there and want that to set.
EDIT: All done. Went for a quick ride today and seems AOK. She definitely runs better than before, but maybe a bit rich or lean at high RPM... I'm sure a Dyno run could fix that, but it's better than it needs to be for my purposes.
Remind me never to make a custom anything ever again.
Many thanks to all those with input over the last months.
Well smack me and call me Sally. Glad it's fixed. Funny it wouldn't run AT ALL with bum/siezed rings. Usually, engines will just run BADLY, but they still run.
When I was a small lad, my friends dad had an old station wagon with one totally shot cylinder. It poured out blue smoke like there was no tomorrow, with almost no compression on that cylinder. Didn't make noise, just tons of smoke. He needed the car on the road, too many kids, not enough money.
He asked my brother (heavy duty mechanic) what he should do about it (sell/junk the car, buy new motor, rebuild motor NOT being an option for him, due to $$$) and my brother told him to disconnect the sparkplug wire from that cylinder and remove the wire completely from the car.
Sure enough, it ran on the other 7 cylinders and stopped smoking by about 90%. Didn't "solve" the problem, but it sure did mask it, and that's all the guy could afford.
